The Post of Christmas Past

It now being December, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share with anyone reading a holiday tradition of mine. For the past several years, I have gotten into the habit of sending out an email with a homemade MS Paint Christmas card. For those of you unfamiliar with MS Paint, it is the Windows paint program, the one with the icon of a cup of pens or markers or something (in XP, anyway). I'm fairly handy with the program, and have created several other non-holiday pieces of bizarre art with it, but the holiday cards have a special place in my heart.

Below is an archive of every MS Paint Christmas card I've ever sent. Please enjoy these cards and know that this year's is in the planning stages.

2003:
This card was inspired by a previous work by my good friend Clive McEnroe (the one who shared the tales of Right Angles Pizza with us) entitled "Chris Rock: A Gentle Portrait." We were kind of hoping to spawn an entire art genre of photos of real people with cartoon eyes paired with an MS Paint drawing of the people but with actual photos of eyes added. In case anyone can't tell, this is Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA, then D-PA).

2004:
I mean, who wouldn't want a walrus for a doctor? This guy looks legit. You'll note the code on the pill is XMAS1224, which perhaps is an insight into how for me, Christmas Eve is the real Christmas celebration, and 12/25 is more of an afterthought. I realize this is not the case for most people and Christmas is considered to be the 25th, not the 24th. Guess what, I may not be Catholic anymore, but I still know Jesus was actually born in the springtime and the celebration of Christmas in the winter was only to tie it to the pagan holiday Yuletide, so the actual date is arbitrary. XMAS1224 all the way, baby.

2005:

Congratulations, another clue to my true identity (Barry White). This may be my favorite one of all, featuring Bruce Lee as depicted on the cover of his classic film, "Enter the Dragon." Hopefully this was obvious. Getting whacked by candy cane nunchaku would be awful, since it would hurt AND be all sticky and gross.

2006:

This one is very culturally sensitive, obviously. I like the lecherous snowman and the gingerbread sumo the best. Oh, anime, I like you, but I also like to mock you.

2007:
I guess it's in the spirit of "The Nightmare Before Christmas", except more directly menacing. Death's body has an odd shape to it, I realize, looking at my work.

2008:
I find curmudgeonly characters very entertaining. I think my Larry David is the best of the three, House's eyes are a little off and he looks kinda like Gene Wilder and J. Jonah Jameson's head proportions are weird. Eh, what can ya do?

Stay tuned for 2009's dose of MS Paint artwork!